Posts from June 2011

June 27, 2011

It’s been a long time since I lived in the UK. I left in December 1993, eight and a bit years after arriving in the misleadingly sunny September of 1985.

In 1985 Thatcher was Prime Minister; by 1993 John Major had taken her place, and I arrived back in 2010 to the joy that is Cameron's Tory/Lib-Dem coalition. (I missed the Blair and Brown years altogether.) When I left, SURPRISE SURPRISE and NOEL’S HOUSE PARTY were still on TV. My fondest memory of SURPRISE SURPRISE is Cilla Black singing and marching her way through ‘In the Navy’ on board an actual ship. Sadly, this is not available on YouTube, though at least we can still see/hear the wonder that was the closing credits.

But I digress. Things change, things stay the same. One thing I had forgotten about: the casual colonialism. In the US, I got out of the habit of experiencing this. When Americans find out you’re from New Zealand, they are various things – delighted, curious, intrigued, envious. Sometimes they are confused, and think that you might have said Venezuela. But mostly they are positive. I heard the words ‘I love your accent’ at least once a week. (This was good, because nobody else anywhere – including anywhere in New Zealand – loves my accent.)

The casual colonialism isn’t as bad here in the UK as it used to be, but this is relative. It’s like saying service in Britain isn’t so bad these days either, or it hasn’t rained that much in Glasgow this week. An example: arriving in the mail recently, a copy of Scotland in Trust magazine. We get this as members of the National Trust. (The National Trust for Scotland, to be precise, because Scotland has to be separate and different. It has to contend with casual colonialism issues of its own.)

In the ‘From the Archive’ section there’s a black-and-white photograph of a kapa haka group standing in a walled garden. The headline reads: ‘Maori dance at Pittmedden 1978.’ Pitmedden Garden is a National Trust property in Aberdeenshire.

Don Currie, author of the short article, describes what we can see in the photo – the fountain, the yew trees, the audience, the ‘dancers’ who had just appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe festival. He makes specific mention of the two guitar players standing behind the group. These guys, both young, wear shirts, blazers, and what people used to call slacks. The ‘elaborate attire’ of the other performers, notes Currie, stands out against the formality of the garden, ‘and even the musicians’ jackets and wide-collared shirts.’ Clearly, he deduces, ‘Maori culture did not go untouched by Seventies fashion.’

Um, what? There's a glimmer here of patronising smugness that – to give the writer the benefit of the doubt – was probably unintentional. Why would anyone Maori living in New Zealand in 1978 – let alone gadding about the world – be ‘untouched’ by the fashion of the day? Without the startling evidence of this photograph, would we readers of Scotland in Trust assume that, back home in the Land of Exotica, Maori walk around wearing piupiu, busily untangling poi or lowering kete of food into hot pools?

Earlier this month I was reminded of how a colonial notion of distance – cultural and physical – persists here. Robert McCrum’s column on books in the Observer mentioned the attention-seeking remarks made by VS Naipaul about female writers (it's all 'feminine tosh', apparently'), and cited the reaction by New Zealand writer – and Booker Prize winner – Keri Hulme. Hulme lives, McCrum advises, ‘amid sheep and fisher folk’ on New Zealand’s South Island. In other words, in some fairy-tale land, a place of yokels and delightful simplicity. (Try asking someone on the West Coast to point you in the direction of some ‘fisher folk’ and see what they have to say.)

According to McCrum, not only is Hulme buried deep in a Tolkienesque idyll, she ‘has been silent for decades.’ This news will surprise many New Zealanders. Is this the silent Keri Hulme who actively comments (sometimes under the moniker Islander) on literary blogs like the late, lamented Leaf Salon, and the lively forum managed by the indefatigable Bookman Beattie? Is this silent Keri Hulme the writer who was published in Landfall last year? The Keri Hulme who was the fiction advisor to the Montana Prize judges the year my first novel won a prize? The Keri Hulme who has edited a Huia Short Stories anthology, and this year is serving once again as a judge in their Pikihuia writing competition?

Hulme herself was unimpressed by the label ‘silent’ and told Bookman Beattie exactly what she thought here.

I suppose what McCrum is really saying is this: Here in London we haven’t heard anything from Keri Hulme for decades, so she MUST be silent. Whatever she’s up to in the distant colonies – ‘noises off,’ as it were – doesn’t count.

The patronising swipes don't stop there. Hulme, McCrum says, ‘told her New Zealand audience …’ – hang on, which audience? Is she the Queen of New Zealand, perhaps? Do we all assemble, amid the sheep and the fisher folk, at a weekly audience? Or perhaps she was speaking to a physical audience at some kind of festival event in New Zealand. No. Actually, she was commenting online on a blog post by Bookman Beattie. I guess McCrum doesn’t want to mention the source, or give a context for the discussion.

In her comment, Hulme calls Naipaul ‘a misogynist prick.’ This permits more smug colonialism from McCrum. ‘The language of literary criticism,’ he observes, ‘clearly has a different register in the Antipodes.’

This might be a more useful observation if Hulme had been engaging in literary criticism – say, writing a long essay on Naipaul for the New York Review of Books. But she was commenting online, responding to a blog post. Anyone reading various online Guardian/Observer articles will soon discover that the ‘language of literary criticism’ in online comments is pretty much the same all over the world. Here’s a selection from Guardian and Observer readers on the topic of Naipaul: he is a ‘total tool’, a ‘silly old fart’, a ‘mega-misogynist’, an ‘old git’, a ‘wife beating’ writer, an ‘oaf’, ‘a prize berk’, and a ‘sexist a**hole.’

A Guardian online article a few years ago posed the question: ‘is VS Naipaul simply the grumpiest, most conceited writer alive?’ In a print article about literary prizes in the Guardian earlier this month, writer and critic Bidisha alleged that a ‘man does a s**t in a potty and it is called a work of genius; a woman produces a work of genius and it's treated like a s**t in a potty.’ (You can read the whole feature here.) Gee, the language of literary criticism clearly has a different register in the UK, doesn’t it?

This is what I mean by casual colonialism: dismissive, smug, and a little patronising, with no sense that one’s own ignorance and/or parochialism might be informing an interpretation – of a picture, of remarks, of another culture, of another part of the world. It’s amazing to me that it still exists here.

This week, when I'm not puzzling over such absurdities, I'm thinking of two of my family members who are in strange places right now - strange to them, at any rate. My mother is in hospital in Auckland, and my niece has just arrived in Paris, where she'll be spending the next two months. I hope my mother will be able to come home soon. I hope my niece has the most wonderful, wonderful time.

June 10, 2011

I'm always surprised to learn that anyone other than a friend, family member or fan visits this blog. (Those fans, by the way, often belong to Frank Cottrell Boyce, who rashly consented to an interview with me last year.) Occasionally someone else stumbles in and wanders around, agog - someone who's Googled SISTER'S FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY or DEVONPORT FERRY. For unknown reasons, these pictures of bag tags are very popular as well.

Sometimes students drop by to gather information for a school project. Other writers tell me they're regular readers, mainly to follow the exploits of TMiddy. All sorts of people pop up as readers - old school friends, current and former students, the brother of someone I once worked with. Some people demand more posts about my books and about writing in general. Some (i.e. my father) would like more pictures. Everyone wants more TMiddy.

But today I learned that not only people who like me seek out this blog. Apparently, other people with too much time on their hands read it as well. Who knew? In the manner of the Two-Star Detective Agency in Cedar Rapids, IA (an actual place of business), these people snoop about online for incriminating evidence. They suspect that when I was in Rome, I wasn't conducting research for a novel at all. Instead I was ... EATING AND DRINKING.

Here I am, pictured on this very blog, having a beer with my lunch! There I am again, later the same afternoon, eating gelato! And that night, after dinner, I'm spotted drinking a glass of wine! How can I possibly be walking around Rome, exploring sites, taking notes, and writing down story ideas when I am so flagrantly involved in non-research-related activities?

Well, haters, I have good news for you. TMiddy, now revealed as a Tikileaks operative, was with me in Rome, and he must be on your paylist. Every day we spent there, he took pictures of me running from the stiff handshake of Novel Research into the cool embrace of Liquid Refreshment. It was very hot in Rome, and we were walking miles and miles ... but no. No excuses. You all know the truth. I didn't go to Rome to research a book, did I? (However long the contract and tight the deadline.) No, I went there to drink Fanta and Frascati. Pictures never lie, and they always tell the whole story. Let the evidence be revealed.

In case some of the softer hearts out there are concerned I did nothing but rehydrate, let me reassure you. I also ate breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. I know, I know. I should have been working THAT WHOLE TIME. But a woman cannot live on Fanta alone. Here is some more incriminating evidence.

In my defence, I'll say this: I wasn't alone in committing this crime of eating and drinking every day in Rome. TMiddy, my betrayer, was there right by my side (or, more typically, across the table). It was just like that scene in CASINO ROYALE where James Bond is playing cards with the villain, as though they're BFFs and not soon-to-be-brawling enemies. But I must admit, TM doesn't look at all happy here, does he?

He knew this would compromise the case against me, don't you think?

From now on, I'll add a new category to this blog: Tikileaks. It's a New Zealander's version of Wikileaks, with more humour and fewer Australians. I'll use it to tag anything useful in case against me (The People VS Dilettante). Knowing me, however, that's pretty much every blog post. La!

June 09, 2011

Rome is eternal, but we just had a week there, crammed with too many things to see and beset by too many blisters. This was my scribbled-on, bedraggled to-do list after five days:

Sadly Ponte Milvio did prove a bridge too far, but we managed to get to almost everything else. And Tom took a picture that could be a cover for the Rome novel I'm writing - this is from the Protestant cemetery, where we spent a fantastic hour:

I've realized that place is the most important starting point for so much of my work. I had various plans and ideas (vague thoughts, really) before I went to Rome, but now much more is clear to me, and the story began revealing itself in the most unexpected places.

I wish I could get started on this right away, while Rome is still seething in my head, but now I must turn my attention to a sequel to RUINED. This has pushed its way to the front of the queue, in an Italian-like manner.

This last picture is me and TMiddy at the Trevi Fountain. We got up at 6:30 AM on Saturday to see it without the noise of the usual 400-strong crowd. We threw coins in, of course, as per the instructions in THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN. (TM: "I think I missed.")